


Handprint

by Problem_Starchild



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Complete, Earthborn (Mass Effect), Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 15:08:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20155594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Problem_Starchild/pseuds/Problem_Starchild
Summary: She freed you from the tank, and every decision she's made since then has been just as interesting. Who is Shepard, exactly?





	Handprint

**Author's Note:**

> This fic explores Grunt's perspective on Shepard over the events of 2185, and what that sort of adoptive relationship might look like from his perspective. Contains Shakarian elements, but it's neither fluffy nor the primary focus. Rated for mentions of violence and blood.

Shepard is a confusing creature. She’s soft. _Two fingers deep to sever the spine, _the tank tells you. But you’ve seen her in action, a blaze of black and red. She’s an ember, a shining coal, an incendiary grenade. She’s rough — even holding her Widow, you’ve seen her beat a fully armed Blue Suns merc to death with brute force — thought he’d sneak up behind her, but she broke through the visor and into the face. _Two hits between the eyes from the butt of a rifle to kill a turian,_ the tank informed you, but it only took her one.

Shepard’s human, or so she says. But Jacob isn’t like her, Miranda isn’t like her. The merc, the thief, the yeoman, the doctor: no, no, no, no. The pilot? You don't believe such a breakable creature could be the same species as Shepard. 

Your search history fills up with results on humans: human culture, human battles -- they don’t have clans, not like the krogan do. Instead, they just arbitrarily divide up land into different nations, and then those nations are divided up arbitrarily into states, provinces, counties, cities -- like the asari, but less organized. You’re smart, but it hurts your head trying to figure it out. Humans have been on the galactic stage less than a century, but Shepard already knows her way around it like a thresher maw knows the flatlands.

_Turian tactics demand you beat your enemy into the ground, then cut off his limbs so he can’t get back up again._ You know this intimately, the drone through your head while you slept in the tank was unrelenting. The turians are your enemy, just like every other species -- maybe more than the salarians. But _they _fear humanity. 

_A three month war._ They called it an 'incident’. Think pieces from the Citadel pop up every day -- are humans taking too much power? Are there too many humans in C-Sec? Is it too soon for humanity to have a spot on the Council?

The _galaxy _fears humanity.

You can’t help but wonder why. From what you’ve seen, none come close to Shepard.

She hauls off quicker than lightning, headbutts Uvenk for daring to question your right to prove yourself. Inspired, you kill a maw together, then you kill that spineless Gatatog bastard. You’ve seen her unnervingly _soft_, settling disputes between officials and scavengers, pausing a march through the wards to keep a worthless, dirty child from crawling into the ducts. When you kill Uvenk, she removes a glove, reaches into the mud of his corpse, presses a palm soaked orange with blood and Tuchanka dust onto your plated head. You don’t move.

“What’s that for?”

“No way they’re turning you away after all that.” Shepard grins, red hair and dirt clinging to her sweaty face. Her eyes are as bright as yours -- electric with the thrill of survival. It sparks something in you. “Still, if you ever get tired of Urdnot, you’ll always have Clan Shepard.”

You snort, shove her with your shoulder. She punches you in the arm, and when you push her again, she holds her ground, laughing for the first time you've heard -- a wild sound. By the time the shaman declares you Urdnot, you don’t need the name anymore. 

You wear it anyway: her gift to you. Somewhere to belong, a cause to fight for. It’s everything you asked for.

_Maybe she’s krogan._

She’s practical about mating, too. You hear there was a human, before. He must not have been strong enough. It’s a hush-hush topic on the ship, but you can’t understand why -- it’s obvious to _you_. Most krogan couldn’t handle a woman like Shepard, no way a _human _could hope to hold her favor, especially one that fails to acknowledge her unquestionable leadership. In your opinion, her courtship with the turian is a good match -- built on medi-gel and thermal clips, the way he holds his aim steady even as he’s flanked, knowing she won’t let them so much as scratch his armor.

You let a merc or a mech get by on occasion, a brief blip in the blood rage, just to test the hypothesis. After the incident on Omega, she always targets heavies first, and the turian’s shields never go down. Anything within five feet of him loses its head in an instant.

It’s so obvious.

It’s a shame he’s stupid. Standing by in the shadows, you watch as she tests him: a traitor on the ground in front of her, she stands in the scope. Steady. Unflinching. _100% chance of fatality, _the tank insists as you stare up at the catwalk, watching those mandibles dance while he argues with her -- but the tank knows _nothing_. You know better. She came back from the dead once -- what can one turian hope to do to her? 

In your opinion, a traitor deserves to die. Whatever excuse Shepard uses to justify denying the turian that satisfaction, it’s nothing but another battle tactic in your book -- exerting herself as his superior, demanding something from him that frankly, he might not have to give. Forcing him to give up control._ Soft tactics,_ but you find yourself admiring them: something you can’t pull off. If a krogan blocks your shot, you just need more bullets. If Shepard blocks your shot, you’d better be _damn _sure you’re willing to face the consequences for thinking you could kill her.

It’s psychological warfare. She hypnotizes the turian, somehow, bends him to her will. 

Shepard wins.

The traitor lives.

Shepard continues to impress. You read on the extranet that she threw away her human excuse for a clan on Earth, a bunch of angry lowlifes with no purpose; her own little slice of the Tuchanka dream. She clawed her way out of the trash with nothing but determination and a gun. Alone, she did all this: ascended to prominence, demanded recognition, brought all of these powerful warriors under her leadership and pushed them to victory. By the time you reach the Collector base, even the geth and the quarian are getting along, and she’s given you the most beautiful shotgun you’ve ever held.

Shepard puts the turian in charge of the fire team.

He survives. 

She does it again.

He accompanies her on almost every mission, but for this one, the _most _important -- she sends him away. The two biotic women who hate each other cover her back instead. _You can do more elsewhere,_ say her eyes -- she’s tricked him into believing it, and it becomes _true_. 

Maybe _this _is why the galaxy fears humans.

_A suicide mission,_ they’d called it, but it doesn’t pan out that way. Every single warrior returns triumphant to the shuttle, including the sick drell. Shepard doesn’t even take the time to celebrate her impossible victory, celebrate breaking free of Cerberus -- there’s still so much to do, and she’s unstoppable. The Collectors were just a warm up. Next you hear, she’s killed the Shadow Broker.

Then, she blows up an entire star system.

All the power she once held seems to spill out of her as she rushes around on the Citadel, securing last-minute transportation, calling in favors -- sending everyone _back_. About half the crew disappear before she can get them a shuttle, and you’re filled with rage at their cowardice -- the thief, the Cerberus agents, damn near most of the crew, the assassin. They dropped the geth off long before, on a rock just outside the Perseus Veil. The dwindling crew takes a load off her back, but it pisses you off. This is the time to _fortify,_ gather her krantt around her to beat back anyone who’d dare to cage her. It’s the only truly dumb thing you’ve ever seen her do, and it’s _infuriatingly _stupid.

Until the last second, you hold out the hope that she’s letting her crew leave to weed out the disloyal from her krantt, only leaving the fiercest and most dependable to fight by her side when the authorities try to take her. Then the turian leaves.

Shepard puts you on a cargo freighter to Tuchanka, gives you sedatives to take.

“I know you can behave yourself in an enclosed space,” she tells you, handing you the case. “But I’d be a shitty battlemaster if I didn’t give you the best possible odds for success.”

"Shepard--"

You're not good at words, but this is the first time you haven't been able to figure out _something_ to say before she goes, standing just inside the airlock.

You _hate_ this. You've never _hated _something so much before, that she’s going to _submit _to lockup, like a criminal, like she’s not a _hero_, a _genius_, some sort of psychic or hypnotist, a diplomatic magician, and by far the _greatest _warrior the Alliance -- no, _all_ of Council space -- has to offer. She’d lock herself up like a lame varren while the Reapers beat down their doors!

“Get those krogan in line for me,” she mutters, leveraging her whole forearm into the hollow of your armor to bring you down to her level. She bumps her forehead to yours where she put her handprint before, and it’s different, soft. Confusing. _Turians _do this. With girlfriends, and babies. You don’t understand her. “We’re gonna need them in fighting shape when I get out.”

You make yourself grin. Your stomachs feel like a shrapnel bomb went off, but you’re _strong,_ you show all your teeth when things get rough. You don’t _get _sick.

“Don’t let prison make you weak, Shepard.”

You headbutt her in return, but not hard at all; not enough that her fragile human brain will slosh around in her skull. She returns the gesture with her legs, far harder than you did, then touches your jaw with all those tiny fingers, so gentle. Your head is still swimming. A wash of _something_ comes over you, and the tank didn’t tell you about this. You don’t recognize what you’re feeling at all, and it translates to this irrational drive to kill something. You push it down, meet her eyes.

“Be good for me, Grunt.”

Then she’s gone.


End file.
